Baseball season is in full swing by now, and I couldn’t be happier (other than the fact that it’s been unseasonably cold for most every game I’ve attended). I’m so consumed that when I saw Ken Burns’ epic documentary Baseball on Netflix, I couldn’t help but dive in. One of the vignettes I saw recently struck a chord with me. In it, one of the commentators talks about how some of her earliest and fondest memories are of her father taking her to Ebbets Field in Flatbush to watch Jackie Robinson play. For her, baseball wasn’t just the national pastime — it was her pastime.

It made me wonder what (if any) similar hobbies and pastimes my generation has that will facilitate a similar legacy.

Most millennials have grown up with an unprecedented freedom of choice as to how they spend their free time. That’s not a bad thing, necessarily. There’s value in not feeling beholden unto our parents’ ideologies and interests; to be free to cultivate the sort of leisure time from which we derive the most pleasure. If mom had you up every Saturday, I dunno, tending beehives or whatever, it’s great that you’re free to never again willfully come within 100 yards of a honeybee. But that reflexive distancing kind of downplays the values and lessons taught by having a hobby (any hobby).

Hobbies and pastimes are the highest form of civilized hedonism. They are, for those who practice them, fleeting opportunities to take time for themselves with no other agenda. They’re also an avenue for accomplishment on our own terms, a rare thing in a time when life has become work and work has become life. You decide when the collection is complete. You decide when to haul in the anchor and head back to shore. There are no clients to glad-hand while you’re working in your woodshop. There are no conference calls to be answered at the ballfield. To derive such satisfaction from activities that also demand such dedication is an odd and wonderful thing, and I fear its importance goes over the head of many a millennial.

That’s not to say millennials aren’t active and involved; if anything, the opposite is true. We’re an incredibly busy bunch, but in some regards, we suffer from an epidemic of dilettanteism. With so many choices and so many possibilities, it’s hard to throw ourselves into any one thing. For a lot of people I know, life is a routine of “wake up, work out, go to work, play in trivial coed sports league, happy hour, then bed.” Lather, rinse and repeat. On the weekends we do yoga. Then we have a Groupon deal for this new brunch place. Then we’re back home to walk the dog, then out the door again before meeting the crew at the rock climbing gym. Finally, we end the night with a show at a hip nightclub. Our aspirations to be and do everything are admirable, but also incredibly exhausting.